In-network performance of handheld mobile terminals

This paper considers a realistic evaluation of the power mobile handsets are able to transmit and receive. It has been suggested to use the so-called total radiated power (TRP) and the total isotropic sensitivity (TIS) for the uplink and downlink, respectively, which may be seen as special cases of the general mean-effective-gain (MEG) measure. These measures are computed from the spherical radiation pattern of the handset and the different measures are obtained by using different models of the mobile propagation environment. In this paper, the results obtained via the spherical radiation patterns are compared with the equivalent performance obtained in a live Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network using data from the Abis network interface. This method does not require altering of the handsets and the testing uses normal calls in the network. The investigation is based on measurements with four different commercially available handsets carried out in two different indoor environments and involving 22 test users. In addition, a series of measurements were also made with a phantom simulating the handset user, allowing a test of how well the phantom represents the average user.     

Isolation of adipophilin and butyrophilin from bovine milk and characterization of a cDNA encoding adipophilin

The milk fat globule membrane-associated proteins adipophilin (alias adipocyte differentiation-related protein) and butyrophilin were purified from bovine milk by reverse-phase chromatography. The nucleotide sequence of bovine adipophilin was obtained via peptide mapping and sequencing of a mammary gland cDNA clone, which comprises 1841 nucleotides and has an open reading frame of 450 amino acids. By peptide mapping, 19% of the amino acid sequence was confirmed. The obtained amino acid sequence has 87 and 80% identical residues with human and mouse adipophilin, respectively. Alignment with the proteins perilipin and TIP47 revealed two highly conserved segments, which may assemble into amphipathic alpha-helices.     

Automated effect-specific mammographic pattern measures

We investigate the possibility to develop methodologies for assessing effect specific structural changes of the breast tissue using a general statistical machine learning framework. We present an approach of obtaining objective mammographic pattern measures quantifying a specific biological effect, such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT). We compare results using this approach to using standard density measures. We show that the proposed method can quantify both age related effects and effects caused by HRT. Age effects are significantly detected by our method where standard methodologies fail. The separation of HRT subpopulations using our approach is comparable to the best methodology, which is interactive.      

Optimal Sampling and Processing of an Impulse Radio Signal Subjected to Narrow Band Interference

In this paper the sampling, quantization and processing of an ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radio (IR) receiver signal is considered when the propagation link is subjected to additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and narrow band interference (NBI) which may be non-Gaussian. The Neyman Pearson log likelihood ratio formulation results in receiver processing that consists of a Generalized Matched Filter (GMF) and linear sampling which exploits the correlation of the NBI noise to effectively suppress it. However, the processing requirements to implement the GMF are prohibitive in the context of an UWB IR. Hence an alternate highly efficient processing scheme based on crude 2 and 3 level quantization with maximum ratio combining (MRC) Rake processing is considered and analyzed. As demonstrated in this paper, the 3 level quantizer is an excellent compromise between receiver performance and computational efficiency and can in some cases exceed the performance of a comparable Rake receiver using linear sampling. This happens in some practical instances when the noise is non-gaussian as will be demonstrated. John Nielsen obtained his BASc and MSc from the University of Toronto in 1981 and 1983 respectively and his PhD from the University of Ottawa in 1990. He became a faculty member of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Calgary in 2002 as an Associate Professor. He is also an affiliated researcher with Telecommunications Research Laboratory of Calgary. His primary research interests are in physical layer wireless communication systems. Prior to his faculty position, Dr. Nielsen was with Research in Motion and Nortel.     

Simple tool to evaluate the impact of daylight on building energy consumption

This paper presents a simple building simulation tool for integrated daylight and thermal analysis. The tool is capable of importing the thermal and visual properties for different glazings and shading positions from the Window Information System (WIS) program. A coupled ray-tracing and radiosity methodology is used to derive the daylight levels for different sky conditions. Both detailed daylight distribution for a particular day and time and hourly discrete values on a yearly basis may be obtained. For an integrated simulation the hourly daylight levels are fed into an existing simple thermal simulation program capable of calculating energy demand and the indoor environment. Straightforward control systems for general and task lighting systems have been implemented together with a shading control strategy that adjusts the shading according to the indoor operative temperature, the risk of glare and the profile angle of the sun. The implemented daylight calculation method allows for shades from the window recess and overhang, and for distant shades blocking the sky vault. Comparisons with the ray-tracing program Radiance show that the accuracy of this approach is adequate for predicting the energy implications of photoresponsive lighting control. The amount of input is small, which makes the tool useful for integrated daylight optimisation in the early design process.     

Molecular Heterojunctions of Oligo(phenylene ethynylene)s with Linear to Cruciform Framework

Electrical transport properties of molecular junctions are fundamentally affected by the energy alignment between molecular frontier orbitals (highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) or lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO)) and Fermi level (or work function) of electrode metals. Dithiafulvene (DTF) is used as substituent group to the oligo(phenylene ethynylene) (OPE) molecular wires and different molecular structures based on OPE3 backbone (with linear to cruciform framework) are achieved, with viable molecular orbitals and HOMO–LUMO energy gaps. OPE3, OPE3–DTF, and OPE3–tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) can form good self‐assembled monolayers (SAMs) on Au substrates. Molecular heterojunctions based on these SAMs are investigated using conducting probe–atomic force microscopy with different tips (Ag, Au, and Pt) and Fermi levels. The calibrated conductance values follow the sequence OPE3–TTF > OPE3–DTF > OPE3 irrespective of the tip metal. Rectification properties (or diode behavior) are observed in case of the Ag tip for which the work function is furthest from the HOMO levels of the OPE3s. Quantum chemical calculations of the transmission qualitatively agree with the experimental data and reproduce the substituent effect of DTF. Zero‐bias conductance, and symmetric or asymmetric couplings to the electrodes are investigated. The results indicate that improved fidelity of molecular transport measurements may be achieved by systematic studies of homologues series of molecular wires applying several different metal electrodes.     

Low dimensional adaptive texture feature vectors from class distance and class difference matrices

In many popular texture analysis methods, second or higher order statistics on the relation between pixel gray level values are stored in matrices. A high dimensional vector of predefined, nonadaptive features is then extracted from these matrices. Identifying a few consistently valuable features is important, as it improves classification reliability and enhances our understanding of the phenomena that we are modeling. Whatever sophisticated selection algorithm we use, there is a risk of selecting purely coincidental "good" feature sets, especially if we have a large number of features to choose from and the available data set is limited. In a unified approach to statistical texture feature extraction, we have used class distance and class difference matrices to obtain low dimensional adaptive feature vectors for texture classification. We have applied this approach to four relevant texture analysis methods. The new adaptive features outperformed the classical features when applied to the most difficult set of 45 Brodatz texture pairs. Class distance and difference matrices also clearly illustrated the difference in texture between cell nucleus images from two different prognostic classes of early ovarian cancer. For each of the texture analysis methods, one adaptive feature contained most of the discriminatory power of the method.     

A Novel and Efficient Feature Extraction Method for Iris Recognition

With a growing emphasis on human identification, iris recognition has recently received increasing attention. Iris recognition includes eye imaging, iris segmentation, verification, and so on. In this letter, we propose a novel and efficient iris recognition method which employs a cumulative‐sum‐based grey change analysis. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can be used for human identification in efficient manner.     

All-fiber active add-drop wavelength router

We describe a fiber Bragg grating Mach-Zehnder interferometer (FBG-MZI) which utilizes active phase control. The active FBG-MZI is operated as a wavelength router, where the grating-selected wavelength channel can be actively routed. We believe this is the first demonstration of an all fibre FBG-MZI wavelength router.     

Designing asynchronous circuits for low power: an IFIR filter bankfor a digital hearing aid

This paper addresses the design of asynchronous circuits for low power through an example: a filter bank for a digital hearing aid. The asynchronous design re-implements an existing synchronous circuit which is used in a commercial product. For comparison, both designs have been fabricated in the same 0.7 μm CMOS technology. When processing typical data (less than 50 dB sound pressure), the asynchronous control and data-path logic, an improved RAM design, and by a mechanism that adapts the number range to the actual need (exploiting the fact that typical audio signals are characterized by numerically small samples). Apart from the improved RAM design, these measures are only viable in an asynchronous design. The principles and techniques explained in this paper are of a general nature, and they apply to the design of asynchronous low-power digital signal-processing circuits in a broader perspective. In fact, this understanding is one of the contributions of the paper. Finally, the paper can be read as an example-driven introduction to asynchronous low-power design